Very briefly – had an excellent show at Mobile Asia Expo. Very valuable feedback from carrier partners on our progress with Ubuntu’s mobile experience and ecosystem. And just heard that a US operator has joined our advisory group – alongside recent additions from Indonesia and Australia. So that means we have partners who cover parts of Asia, most of Europe, North and South America. I’d like to get a perspective from Japan and Africa in the mix, then I think we can close the CAG as we’d rather have fewer, deeper conversations.

Nevertheless, those of you in the US will be very happy to know you are now represented in the Carrier Advisory Group!

Last week we held the first meeting of the new Ubuntu Carrier Advisory Group, which helps us figure out how best to shape Ubuntu to meet the needs of the mobile industry.

It was very exciting!

We mapped out our approach to the key question I’ve been asked by every carrier we’ve met so far: how can we accommodate differentiation, without fragmenting the platform for developers? We described the range of diversity we think we can support initially, received some initial feedback from carriers participating immediately, and I’m looking forward to the distilled feedback we’ll get on the topic in the next call.

CAG members get a period of exclusivity in their markets. We’ll close the CAG to new members shortly. We don’t need a very large group; just a few clear-thinking and thoughtful partners who have experience introducing new platforms. And with this initial group of members, we are all set to get really good insight for a really great launch next year.

Next week I’ll be in Shanghai for the GSMA’s Mobile Asia Expo, and looking forward to a round of in-person meetings with our advisory group. Mostly we’ll be meeting by telephone and video conference, given the very global nature of the CAG, but there are a few events which attract critical mass of attendees in the industry where we’ll arrange a CAG face-to-face as well.

Thanks to everyone who is participating in the project – Ubuntu’s touch experience is really coming along in leaps and bounds. I love hearing about the new devices to which it’s been ported, or new apps getting started. This is the frontier for personal computing, and we want free software leading the way. You all make that possible.